Although, I suppose, if it was gonna happen, the timing could have been a LOT worse.

Washing dishes, I realized that I was feeling water drip onto my foot. Huh? My foot was near to the dishwasher, atop the atlas that came out of my old car (I've still not replaced it -- haven't found one I like as well, but it's so old and ratty I don't want to carry it either). And there was now a puddle of water on top of it. And underneath it. I tossed down a dish-towel, carted the atlas out to the garage, ran downstairs and grabbed a few more towels. I felt across the top of the counter, and didn't find any place that was wet. With some trepidation, I peeked inside the dishwasher I'd not used in ... months ... and it was ... full past the bottom of the door with ... nasty ... water. *slam*.

Hoping that it wouldn't make things worse, I started a small (empty) wash. When it was done, the Spouse cleaned stuff out of the dining room, and I moved mostly my stuff from my old car that I've not processed yet, from the kitchen-area into the dining room. Other than the atlas, most of the stuff (boxes from Quill, etc. I've not yet opened, bags of maps of cities I visited in my last car) was dry. The map bag had some drops on it, but none inside. One (I think empty) paper bag (waiting to be recycled) up against the cupboards must have been a bit downstream, and was standing in water. Ugh.

Then I emptied the stuff from below the sink (in case we'd need to get in there) -- into the space cleared by moving my old car stuff. We've already thrown away one item that was ... aged beyond usefulness. The dishwasher had indeed drained. It was no longer full of water -- and while it wasn't empty, there was less than an inch in the bottom.

Hopefully within the course of the next week (yeah, it will probably take me that long if not longer) I'll be able to wash the stuff that came off the floor, tossing the waterlogged bag, re-build the under-sink shelf (after cleaning it thoroughly), and put the cubic yard of chemicals back under there. And then work on getting my car stuff out of the dining room.

Meanwhile I'll get back to today's tasks and add "run the dishwasher once a fortnight, whether it needs it or not" to the list.

Oh ew. Plumbing-type woes are the household glitches I fear the most. Electricity I can do, and it doesn't even smell bad. HVAC will at least not ruin everything you own if it goes on the fritz. But plumbing... igggg.

Heh. That reminds me of an afternoon a few years ago. A friend of mine wanted to put in a salt-cracker for his pool so he wouldn't have to add chlorine anymore, just salt. They work pretty well.

Another friend of ours is Exceedingly Handy with things mechanical / electrical / plumbing related. He agreed to put it in with myself and the pool owner as his Igors.

"Okay, there's two parts to this job: the plumbing and the electrical. We need to do the electrical first."

"Out of curiosity, why does it matter?"

"It's hot. I don't know about you, but I'm going to want a cold beer soon. Then probably another. Hot + a bit of alcohol can lead to mistakes. If I screw up the plumbing we get leaks. If I screw up the electrical we get dead. This is hooked up to a pool after all."